Bonfire of the Chick-fil-A

I think surely the media will move on to the next hot trend. But no! It doesn’t stop! It snowballs into something bigger. You either LOVE Chick-fil-A or you HATE Chick-fil-A, you can’t separate the product from the person behind it. It’s like Tim Tebow. We can’t simply evaluate him as a good or bad football player. We have to know everything where he stands because he could tear the nation into pieces.

Yeah. Every time you eat a chicken sandwich there, a lesbian kitten dies. More:

Chick-Fil-A came under criticism this month after a report by the organization Equality Matters revealed that the company donated around $2 million to antigay Christian organizations in 2010. “Guilty as charged,” the fast-food chain’s president Dan Cathy said over allegations that his company is antigay (“We are very much supportive of the family—the biblical definition of the family unit.”).

So. Here we are. Tumblr, listen up.

We’re hoping to find a current or former employee of Chick-Fil-A who might want to spill the beans on life inside the alleged antigay company.

“We’re hoping to find a current or former employee of Chick-Fil-A who might want to spill the beans on life inside the alleged antigay company.”

If that’s you, or you know someone who might want to talk to us, please email brian.ries@newsweekdailybeast.com. And if you’d like to help spread the word of our search, a reblog or a tweet would be most appreciated.

Initially, I thought, OK, please let that person be the 20-year-old summer intern going rogue on this thing we call Tumblr.

No! It’s not! It’s Newsweek’s veteran social media editor. Please stop! Do not destroy journalism through Tumblr and reveal your biases. Do not show how blatantly slanted your outlet is, at least keep it internal. The hilarious part about social media is that you often get to see what reporters really think, who they really love, who they really hate. Yes, a religion is often the brunt of it. God forbid you believe anything specific and let it influence how you understand the world.

[Quick update: The Atlantic Wire is reporting that Newsweek will probably end its print edition as soon as this fall. I really hate it when media outlets die in some form, but truly: who is running that ship into the ground?]

Who, indeed.

Can you imagine the (justified) outrage if a national newsmagazine put up a Tumblr trolling for information on gay-friendly behavior inside, say, Starbucks, in order to goose right-wing outrage at the company? You’d have to work hard to imagine it, because it would never, ever happen. Hell, you won’t even see a Tumblr trolling for instances of mistreatment of immigrant workers at chicken processors supplying Chick-Fil-A.

This is all about some fake-journalism scheme dreamed up by a few extremely parochial, bourgeois anti-Christian bigots who work in the Newsweek/Daily Beast building in lower Manhattan. It’s not about reforming a great social wrong. It’s about destroying the reputation of a restaurant whose owners are traditional Christians who share the views on marriage of half the country. This has happened before.

To be clear, if someone wants to boycott a business for any reason, that’s their right. The media’s distortion of this story, and Newsweek’s egregious and sleazy advocacy journalism, is what especially ticks me off.

Listen, pro-gay folks: this kind of thing is why many Christians and other social conservatives fear what’s coming. It is not enough for many on your side to achieve your goals of legal equality. You seek to destroy anybody who dissents, including ruining them professionally. And you have the mainstream media on your side.

I will continue to patronize businesses whose owners support gay rights, as long as the products and/0r the service is high quality. Why? Because I can live in a society in which good people can disagree on things, and still get along, and trade with each other. I have eaten at Chick-Fil-A exactly once in the past three years. It’s not my thing. The food is fine, but I don’t eat a lot of fried chicken. But now, seeing what they’re enduring, with this media-driven hysteria, and knowing that more of this sort of thing is coming for businesses run by people like them — which is to say, people like me — I’m thinking, “Eat mor chikin!”

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126 Responses to Bonfire of the Chick-fil-A

Voltaire was exceeding wise in his observations of the ameliorative effects of the market on social harmony in his Letters from London. After noting the enmity that existed between the clergy of different religions, he goes on to note that the London Stock Exchange is different: “Go into the London Stock Exchange . . . and you will see representatives from all nations gathered together for the utility of men. Here Jew, Mohammedan and Christian deal with each other as though they were all of the same faith, and only apply the word infidel to people who go bankrupt. Here the Presbyterian trust the Anabaptist and the Anglican accepts a promise from the Quaker. On leaving these peaceful and free assemblies some go to the Synagogue and others for a drink, this one goes to be baptized in a great bath in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost, that one has his son’s foreskin cut and has some Hebrew words he doesn’t understand mumbled over the child, others go to their church and await the inspiration of God with their hats on, and everybody is happy.”

Yes, Voltaire’s was a world in which money took precent over God and kin. What a masterful accomplishment, the Anglo-American financial civilization of glass boxes and broken families.

People get fired all the time for what they say at the office, in front of a client and how they respond to a crisis. We’re all accountable for our actions. A CEO is no different. Would you have a problem with Dan Cathy opposing racial equality on the same grounds of Biblical principles? That use to be the law of the land — “separate, but equal”. We’ve evolved as a society. Maybe C-F-A, should serve blacks through the kitchen’s backdoor.

[What are you getting at? That gross violations of the 1st Amendment are justified because politicians do it “all the time”? That’s not how it works here. We have a written constitution and a court system that routinely bitch slaps such pandering politicians.]

My argument is not that everyone does it, but that conservative only find it intolerable when liberals do it. So conservatives produce endless words condemning liberal boycotts and liberal politicians but on the conservative side there is nothing. This has become particularly evident since liberal boycotts have become more effective with the rise of social media.

Because of your awesome court system and constitution neither side’s politicians will be successful in their quest, but it is not helpful to ignore this kind of political idiocy where ever it rears it’s head.

Public Defender, I hate to state the obvious, but two men cannot make a baby, and two women cannot make a baby. Children being raised by same-sex parenting partners have at least one other biological parent somewhere, and my stance that their same-sex parenting partners shouldn’t be allowed to redefine marriage in order to include their sexual partnership doesn’t hurt the children any more than being denied their own mother and/or father already does.

So when you say that my opposition to gay “marriage” harms children being raised by same-sex parenting partners, I am bewildered. When two gay men or two gay women can make a baby without a third party, we can talk then about whether or not their relationship should be called “marriage” and whether denying it that label hurts “their” children. I think it hurts children more for them to be forced from infancy to chant “Two dads are better than having a mom” or “Two moms are better than having a dad” or whatever the trendy phrase among the fewer than 300,000 American families made up of same-sex partners and the children they are raising together (at least temporarily) is these days.

But the media will only rejoice in Amazon’s announcement of support for gay “marriage”. It is called a double standard: agree with them and get a lot of positive, free press; disagree and get silly negative publicity. I love Chick-fil-a and I am proud of their courage to stand for their beliefs (like being closed on Sundays!).

“To be clear, if someone wants to boycott a business for any reason, that’s their right.”

But if you do, or even if you only want to report on the workplace conditions, you’ll be called “extremely parochial, bourgeois anti-Christian bigots”…

Just to point out, many people who favor gay marriage, who think it is a civil right and also the best way for society to arrange itself, are also Republicans and Christians. And Conservatives. Calling such nasty names is not very Christian, or Conservative, though it might well be Republican.

Same-sex couples can adopt almost everywhere. When you adopt, your child is as much your child as if it were born to you. Biology is not everything.

Your comments are an insult to adoptive parents (straight and gay) everywhere. We love our kids as much as you love yours. We care for our kids as much as you care for yours. We are as protective of our kids as you are of yours. And we get angry when ignorant people like you tell us are families are second-rate.

And yes, you hurt children. You also refuse to take responsibility for that very serious consequence of your decision.

I’m going to patronize Chick-Fil-A and forget about Amazon, which is a pity because I have to use them for my Kindle Fire. There are other options however. I think free speech is permitted under the law and so, congratulations to Chick Fil A.

Public Defender, there is a kernel of truth wrapped up in your bigoted remarks, but bigoted they are.

I don’t go all the way with Erin Manning’s views either, but, like it or not, it is true that it takes a man and a woman to make a baby in the first place, and it is not unreasonable or irrational to suggest that the man and woman who do so should take responsibility for their creation.

This is where the hoary wishful thinking, “biology is not destiny” crashes and burns. Of course biology is destiny: we’re all going to die someday. There is no greater hubris in any culture than seriously trying to live forever. Likewise, our bodies have a very complex biochemistry, which we did not choose or design, and while we can tinker with what naturally breaks down, we ignore what it is at our peril.

Given that many children are bouncing around horrific foster care systems, I maintain that a stable, empathetic gay couple, willing to put the child first, as every natural or adoptive parent should during child-raising years, is a worthy alternative.

But, if there is a capable, stable, heterosexual couple available, Occam’s razor and Murphy’s law, perhaps even Voltaire’s wager, suggest that it might well be healthier for the child to be raised by that couple, rather than by two men or two women.

That takes second place to the wounded ego of would-be adoptive gay couples, who don’t QUITE love the children “as much as you love yours” if they are not prepared to consider that maybe there are better options for the good of the children. Remember Solomon and the dispute over the baby? I’m not confident you would be first to say “Give the child to her, but don’t kill it.” You argue like a person who would say, give me my half, or I’ll be insulted.

Gosh, Public Defender, I didn’t realize you were one of those people who thinks that only married couples should be allowed to adopt. Clearly you must think so; if you thought single people could adopt, you would say that the child is protected by the adoption agreements and documents, and that a marriage certificate does absolutely nothing either to help or to harm the child…

Or do you think adoption by singles is fine, but that if two men live together they have to be “married” in order to adopt?

I’m calling your bluff, you see. If your concern really were for children, you would realize that pretending two men are “married” impacts the stability of an adopted child’s legal relationship to one of them is absurd, unless we pretend that the law can give a child two “fathers” and erase his need for a mother. Which, of course, is exactly what you do pretend.

Guess what, the kids are already legally adopted. “Pretending” otherwise doesn’t change that reality. Once the adoption is final, the parents are the parents, period.

Whether you like it or not, single people can adopt, unmarried heterosexual couples can adopt, unmarried same-sex parents can adopt, married same-sex parents can adopt, heterosexual stepparents can adopt, and same-sex stepparents can adopt. That is not “pretending,” that is reality.

Adoptions give kids who have lost one or both parents (for many different reasons) new parents who take full responsibility. Retroactively nullifying adoptions by “pretending that they are not real is a sure way to hurt children, badly.

Potential adoptive couples must be judged case-by-case. Many same-sex couples would make much, much, better parents than many heterosexual couples.

And it’s not me who is trying to split the baby. Your side wants to take already adopted kids who have forever lost one or two biological parents and rip the away one of the only parents that child knows. That’s evil.

But it’s not really evil in Erin’s case. She appears to be living in a world of pretend. She sticks her fingers in her ears and sings “la la la la la la la.” She doesn’t have enough grip on reality to be fairly accused of evil.

Gosh, PD–I think that children deserve to have a mom and a dad instead of being used as props in an evil game adults are playing called “marriage is whatever I decide it is today!”–and I’m the one who is living in the world of pretend?

Have you ever read the accounts of children raised by same-sex parenting partners? I’ve read some. One woman, whose name I’ve forgotten, gives talks about how much she hated being the “poster child” for her two gay “dads,” and how their immense level of dysfunction sexually and otherwise negatively impacted her whole life. She was desperate for a mom, the one thing they could never give her, and for some example of sexual restraint, which might have kept her from falling into harmful relationships later–but they couldn’t give her that, either. Oh, but you’ll chime in here to say that some heterosexual biological parents screw their kids up too, and kids are resilient, and this woman was probably a spoiled brat not to realize how special and magnificent it was to have two dads instead of one! That “stick fingers in ears and say la la la etc.” thing is something you’re quite good at too.

Erin,
Have you ever read the stories of children being raised in opposite-sex houses? I’ve seen far too many examples of heterosexuals doing horrible things to their kids horribly. I’ve represented both perpetrator and victim of that. That may be the hardest part of my job. And if you want anecdote, the kids of my gay friends and neighbors are doing just fine. But I don’t know what happened to the two-year-old across the street when her heterosexual parents got divorced and moved their separate ways.

Even if I buy your argument that “all kids deserve a mother and a father,” not all kids get that. Wishing that away does not change the reality that many, many children do not get to be raised by their biological parents. If you think it’s bad that two people of the same sex are parents to a kid, you are just making that child’s life worse by denying that child health insurance, survivor’s benefits, etc. “You’ve had a tough life, kid, let me make it even harder.”

You lost this argument when 3 things happened. 1) the stigma largely disappeared for gay people to have open, healthy, monogamous relationships; 2) artificial reproduction became legal, affordable to some, and relatively common; and 3) gay people were allowed to adopt either together or as step parents.

Your beef seems to be with those things. Unless you can eliminate them (and you haven’t done that even in Texas, where I know same-sex couples can adopt in at least some courts), you are just adding pain to kids that you already think have things bad enough. That’s cruel.

As I said in more recent comment thread, usually, dialog can result in mutual respect, even in the absense of agreement. But the more you write, the more I loath your position, the less I respect your faith, and the more I believe that you must simply be defeated.

Let me end my part in this evenings argument with an anecdote that is sufficiently nefarious that you might find it helpful.

In law school, I had a class that discussed banking regulation. When someone embezzled, there was the question of whether the loss shold be borne by the sending bank, receiving bank, or the customer. After explaining a hypothetical, the professor asked the class who should have to pay back the loss. One student responded, “the thief.” The professor laughed, “the thief is gone and has spent the money.”

You keep saying that kids deserve to live with their biological mother and father. Well, for many kids, that option is gone. And for many kids, the same-sex couple that has been raising them is a far better alternative than any available opposite-sex couple.

If you think that’s bad for those kids, denying the protections of marriage does not give them a married, opposite-sex set of parents. Denying those kids the protections of marriage just gratuitously hurts those kids.

If that’s what your faith requires, you have a faith that is brutal and cruel.

Public Defender… exactly what do you think “your side” (that is, my side) is exactly? Define me for me, please. I’ve offended almost EVERYONE with a strong ideological opinion on this subject, at one time or another. I happen to believe I’m the only one with any common sense on the subject, but then, I would, wouldn’t I?

I explicitly and openly stated that given the current state of foster care, unwanted children, and adoption resources, there will be many occasions when a gay couple will be the best option. When it is, I would not turn a child over to a couple of alcoholic drug-addicted heterosexual mutual batterers with non-stop foul mouths. Nor would I keep the child bouncing around foster care for a year waiting for the right heterosexual couple, when a qualified gay couple is available.

Those are sound criteria. “I want to be recognized as equal” is not sound criteria for child placement. And, when there is a choice between an intelligent, stable, prosperous, gay couple, and an equally well qualified heterosexual couple, I would place the child with an adoptive mother and father, a man and a woman. It is the natural thing to do.

“Retroactively nullifying adoptions” is a legitimate concern, although it seems SOMEWHAT of a straw man here. There are many technical legal reasons children are torn from the only parents they know, including biological mothers who gave the kid up for adoption, then decided five years later “That’s my baby, I want him/her back.” I’m opposed to almost ALL such claims, because the best interest of the child is to keep a stable family life the child already has. I would not, therefore, take a child AWAY from a gay couple with whom they are thriving. I’m not sure Erin would either, although if the child complains about her gay “father” using her as a poster child, we have a horse of another color.

But, the main point here, I thought, is whether a child should be placed with a gay couple in the first place. Often, there is a legitimate case that this would not be the first choice.

To say, “If a gay couple has adopted, then they should be allowed to marry for the child’s sake” is a very slender thread indeed, and precisely one opportunistic use of adoption for manipulative reasons, as Erin has decried. It would be equally easy to say, for the child’s sake, don’t place them with a gay couple, place them with a married couple. Whether or not there is a legitimate case for gay marriage, it should be made a priori considering the issue of adoption. Otherwise, you ARE using the child as a pawn.

I suppose the more you loath Erin’s position, the more I loath yours, because your dialog becomes more strident and less conducive to mutual respect. I don’t line up with Erin because she is my dear friend and ideological comrade. There are many issues on which she despises me, even though I’ve found points of agreement on those issues too. I align with her, partly, on this dialog, because like most citizens of the republic, she is sometimes right, at least in part. She’s also a fan of high speed rail. Could we all agree on that subject?

Siarlys,
Many same-sex adoptions are similar to step-parent adoptions, especially after in vitro. If that gay couple does not adopt, that kid is not adopted, period.

In another thread, Erin conceded that there were over 100,000 same-sex couples raising kids. That is not a “slender reed.” That’s an awful lot of kids to hurt just because Erin’s interpretation of her faith tells her that those parents should have married someone else.

Same-sex parents who adopt want the same thing that infertile opposite-sex parents want–a family. Biology doesn’t make that easy, but it happens. And adoption and marriage protect their kids the same was adoption and marriage protect the kids of opposite-sex parents.

On a related note, the ore that protections are tied to marriage and are thereby denied to same-sex couples, out of fairness, more and more of the benefits previouslt available to married couples are becoming available to unmarried couples, straight or gay. For example, more and more companies are offering health benefits and spousal/parental leave to unmarried couples and parents. There is also an estate planning industry to help unmarried couples approach what married couples have. That means society is creating a marriage-lite that really does decrease the incentive for opposite-sex couples to marry. So, ironically, banning same-sex marriage actually weakens opposite-sex marriage in a way that allowing same-sex marriage never could.

So, Erin position hurts the kids of same-sex parents and weaken the incentives for opposite-sex marriage. What a brilliant policy!

“So, Erin position hurts the kids of same-sex parents and weaken the incentives for opposite-sex marriage. What a brilliant policy!”

I made this point years ago. I have seen this in many places, all of which have encouraged these forms of “marriage lite”, as I call it. Many places wish to be fair to same sex couples, so they place policies in place to give them some of the benefits of marriage, but not all (thus the term “marriage lite”). Heterosexual couples (rightly so) then complain that all Adam & Steve have to do is sign an affidavit that they’re committed and viola, health insurance (or what have you), while they have to get married before they can get it. And so many places then offer it to couples of both the same and opposite sex.

Clearly, this erodes the incentive for heterosexuals to marry while not even giving same sex couples all of the rights. Far better have been places like Iowa, where there was a large leap from no recognition to full marriage equality. While obviously it was a bit of a jar to the state (I’m probably understating that), there ended up being no erosion of marriage in Iowa. Opposite sex couples continued to have the exact same requirements they have before, with no such jealousy as was done in other states that did not.

But regardless, anytime you grant something to one set without doing it to another, that is purely discriminatory, and as you’ve so well illustrated, that can hurt both the minority as well as the majority.

Well, Public Defender, you’ve sidestepped every question I asked you, but you’ve restated your position interestingly.

I wondered when “domestic partnerships” were invented — for heterosexual couples first… let’s see… We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall, keeping us tried and true… but we do want tax benefits and crossover on health insurance, so we DO want a piece of paper from the city hall, only don’t call it marriage… because its not fair for MARRIED couples to have all this good stuff and we don’t just because we didn’t want to marry…

That was the worst pouting childish nonsense I’d heard in a long time. Then gay couples said they wanted in on domestic partnerships, and then they said “IT’s not FAIR we can’t call our partnership a MARRIAGE.”

Well, its not a marriage. Marriage has a definition. Every legal case starts by defining terms, and one fatal error in the Goodrich decision was NOT to define the term before ruling on who was entitled to it. IF the learned judges had troubled to define marriage, they could have found little basis for any definition but “the union of a man and a woman.” Then they would have realized that no individual man, nor any individual woman, had been denied equal access to marriage. Nobody is entitled to the name without the game. It is what it is. It is not a pile of goodies.

Fairness has nothing to do with it. If you marry, you are treated by the law as married. If you don’t marry, or want something that is not a marriage, then don’t cry me a river.

As for in vitro, there is still a biological parent, at least one, technically two, but at least one who actually has the child. That’s not adoption. If the woman who gave birth puts the child up for adoption, that’s another story.

According to our elites, it is the height of intolerance for eHarmony to only cater to heterosexuals or for Chik-Fil-A to support traditional marriage. Yet these very same elites have no problem with performing a test on an unborn child to see if he will be born with Down’s Syndrome–and then aborting the child for the crime of having it. According to our elites, it is a “war on women” to not require Catholics to cover contraception in their insurance. Yet these very same elites have no problem with aborting a baby based on her gender. Our elites have told us that we “cannot compromise” when it comes to what they (vaguely) identify as gay rights and reproductive rights. Yet these same elites conveniently become “practical” when it comes to unborn children’s rights. And they accuse the rest of us of moral hypocrisy?

I know nothing about eHarmony, I have no problem eating at Chick-Fil-A, I consider abortion in case of Down’s syndrome both humane and rational (as do 90% of parents who receive the in utero diagnosis — are all of them “elites”?), I favor high-deductible low premium health insurance with a Health Savings Account (but I’m not so “elite” I think that should be one size fits all for everyone), I don’t even identify enough with gay rights to be in any position to compromise, I think contraception is wonderful, like that song Loretta Lynn wrote celebrating it…

Cut the stereotypes. Every person you ask will have a slightly different response to your laundry list. Or are you too “elite” to allow for individuals to be individuals?

Incorrect and badly so, anyone who believes in the Libertarian and classical liberal principle of self ownership ought to be appalled CHick-fil-a is funding organizations who want to use the government to limit the freedom of people to make a choice that harms no one. Do you believe in the principle of self ownership or not? I do as an Agorist market anarchist, and I applaud the American Conservative for speaking out against military interventionism regardless of the party in power, but I believe you got this one wrong